Porto, Portugal, July 11, 2013 – Lack of communication messed up the first match of Jamaica’s Tionna Graham and Lisanne Roofe at the FIVB Beach Volleyball U19 World Championships in Porto.

The two 14-year old girls lost 2-0 (21-6 21-7) to Australia’s Phoebe Bell and Agnieszka Kudziela and were very disappointed about their first ever international match.

“It was kind of bad, we have to put more effort in our game, work harder and communicate better with each other”, Graham said.

“We can do better than this”, Roofe said. “There was a lack of communication. But the tournament is not over yet.”

Graham and Roofe have been playing beach volleyball for a year now, competing in national tournaments but had not played outside Jamaica yet. “We used to play indoor at school”, Roofe said. “And one day our coach just told us we were supposed to come to training on the beach.”

And ever since they got hooked on beach volleyball. “I like the fact that you have to use your head more. The court is smaller and you have to be more clever to score.”

“It’s outside, where you meet friends”, Graham said. “We can play in the sun and I like to dive for the ball in the sand.”

Special coach

Since a few months the girls are trained by a very special coach, Brazilian beach volleyball legend
Jackie
Silva. It is part of a special exchange programme between Brazil and Jamaica.

“She is a nice person”, Graham said. “She travelled all the way from Brazil to teach us how to play volleyball and we were able to play here because of her.”

“So that is also why I am disappointed we lost, because she put so much effort in teaching us and we trained so hard for this.”